DEVIL - Chapter Five
"In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time." -
Leon Trotsky
Chapter Five
Mystique was aware that there was something problematic about what she was doing even as she approached Azazel's door. She was repeating herself. It was possible that she was reinforcing a bad tenancy to be dependent upon men and their opinions of her.
Nonetheless, she was at his door now and it seemed too late to consider retreating.
She knocked softly on the door, but received no answer. That was what she had expected; she hadn't heard Azazel come upstairs, but she had wanted to rule out the possibility that he may have teleported directly into the room.
She reached out to wrap her hand around the doorknob, and found that it would not turn. Locked.
Somehow this eventuality had not occurred to her. She stood in front of the door, disappointed and frustrated and maybe just a little relieved, still jazzed up with the thrill of her thwarted daring, and tried to figure out what to do next.
It probably hadn't been a very good plan anyway - the more she thought about it the more unsure she was that Azazel would have been pleased to find her in his room. In her former life, she'd had plenty of experience with sneaking into boys' rooms, and they always reacted to her like kids on Christmas morning, but Azazel wasn't some high school boy. He was private - the fact that his door was locked only confirmed that further - and he might have been offended or angry to find that privacy violated.
Her original plan was also beginning to feel potentially dangerous. Even the idea of sneaking around in the dark in the rooms of a man who was always armed was starting to seem incredibly foolish, now that she stopped to think about it. Azazel was so adept with those blades that Mystique did not think he would make a mistake, but startling him still seemed... like a bad plan. Asking for trouble.
Yeah, the entire thing was a bad plan, and standing under the hallway's flickering lights she wasn't sure just what she'd even been thinking. She'd had an impulse to do something extreme - something wild enough to put the agent and his twitching head out of her mind - and all that had brought her here. It had something to do with Erik, too, she decided; When she'd tried this tactic on Erik things hadn't gone as she'd originally hoped, but he had given her exactly what she'd need at that moment. What he'd said to her had been clarifying - it had illuminated a way forward.
Was that what I came here looking for, another moment like that? she wondered uncertainly. If that's it then this really, really was a -
"Bad idea," said a voice behind her said, finishing Mystique's thought out loud.
Mystique turned toward the voice quickly. "Oh," she said, trying to force her face into something like a friendly smile. "Emma. Hi."
Emma looked her up and down sharply. Mystique felt judged - judged and found wanting - and hated that she should be made to feel that way when in her natural form. Even more than that, she hated that it was another Mutant who was making her feel that way, especially one who looked so bloody -
"Normal," Emma said. The word hung between them for a long moment. Mystique wasn't sure if she should feel angry or ashamed of herself. When Emma spoke again, it was to ask, "What are you doing here?"
"I was looking for Azazel," she said quickly, still trying to retain a veneer of friendliness - she did not want to cause a fight, not if she could help it. "Do you know where he is?"
There was this sort of poised politeness to Emma that Mystique almost envied, an air of knowing that she was better than everyone else to the point that she didn't even have to prove it, it was so self-evident. But she was brittle, too, Mystique suspected. Very brittle. "I'm not Azazel's keeper. He's gone wherever it is he goes," she said, and occurred to Mystique that she'd just been told that Azazel was not inside the Headquarters. "But you've failed to understand my question; Why are you here?"
Emma had knocked her badly off balance by sneaking up on her like that, and Mystique was still trying to recover, but it felt as though showing annoyance or anger would be the same thing as admitting defeat. Acting nice - pretending to be slightly puzzled by Emma's rudeness rather than offended - seemed like the safe choice of action, even if they both knew it was just a game. "I don't know what you mean."
"You're a child," Emma said.
"I'm older than I look -" Mystique began to say, but Emma cut her off.
"Bullshit. You're a child, and you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into. You don't belong here."
"I don't think that's your decision to make," Mystique said, trying to keep her voice even.
"You know I'm right," Emma said.
Mystique paused, considering what she really did know. There was something very Hank-like about Emma, she decided, watching Emma's face, and that explained a great deal about her. Projection, she thought, knowing that Emma was following along as she thought it. Projection and self-loathing.
Emma didn't echo those thoughts back at her out loud, as she had some of Mystique's others.
There was a small sound from the other side of the door - the whooshing intake of air that seemed happen when Azazel teleported. A moment later the door swung open, and Azazel was there, leaning easily against the door frame, fingers curled around the side of the door to keep it from opening further. Behind him she could see just a sliver of the room, the dim interior flickering with candle light.
He looked at her first, and again she felt eyes looking her up and down, appraising her, but the feeling was not maleficent, as it had been when Emma did the same. He smiled briefly, but then he turned to Emma, and his expression became more serious. "Emma," he said. "You are well?"
"Of course," she said, in a tone that Mystique couldn't even begin to read.
"That's good," he said seriously. He turned back to Mystique, his head cocked sideways in question, and keeping his grip on the door he let it swing open further. She hesitated, then slipped under his arm and into the room. Behind her, she heard Azazel say, "Good night, Emma." The door clicked shut.
Inside her head, she heard Emma say, He'll ruin you. Mystique brushed this off as spite, and shook her head as though she had an annoying fly in her ear. Then she looked around the room in astonishment.
While Angel and Mystique had been furnishing the headquarters's rooms with pawn shop castoffs, he'd turned this room into a thief's den of wonderments, draped in red velvet and crimson silks. Icons dangled from the ceiling on red lace strings, small paintings of the Saints or of Mary and her Child. Paintings and tattered propaganda posters covered the walls, and the flickering light of the candles seemed to make the figures move. The desk was littered with stacks of heavy, leather-bound books with tittles she couldn't read. She could smell incense.
"I want to show you something," Azazel said from behind her.